The Icon
"We know now that this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's ..." :- Excerpt from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds Tactical Analysis *'Incomprehensible': The Icon cannot die. The most a prospective opponent could do would be to hammer it with a superweapon or hordes of artillery until the shell gives up the ghost and whatever controls it goes back to wherever it came from. Anything in a wide radius of it will be completely and utterly annihilated. *'Irresistable': Protectorate units are not immune to the Icon's effects. Not even Venus, the second-strongest warrior in the Protectorate's arsenal, can stand up to the Icon's assault for long. In fact, the very structure that creates the Icon, the Summoner, is most likely destroyed in the violent backlash of its awakening. *'Irrepressible': Fortunately, the immense power of an entire universe's sentience tends to wear down a physical frame rather quickly. The Icon will only remain in our world for a limited time, before returning to its own universe. *'Insurmountable': The Icon, sentience of an entire universe, is unable to gain any veterancy upgrades, because you really do not need any more of "all of that!" Operational History Excerpt from a Talon interrogation Talon interrogation of Brother-Crusader Simon Abel, sole survivor of the Crawler Cell ''Remiel'' ... HIGH INQUISITOR JAMES SOLOMON: “What you speak is blasphemy, Brother-Crusader Abel. How do you expect us to believe these robots as you call them, managed to rip apart your Crawler, Remiel into such contorted masses?” BROTHER-CRUSADER SIMON ABEL: *Wide eyed and possessing a crazed grin. Maniacal laughter* "Them? Those toys with their popguns couldn't even scratch the skin on a fanatic. No not them, it was THEM!" (Points up) SOLOMON: "Them!?" 'Visibly irritated, grits teeth' “DO YOU WANT US TO USE STRONGER MEASURES!? Make sense, CRUSADER!” ABEL: "MhMhMhM! So you want me to make sense? HAHAHA! No, I can never make sense, and this never will, Inquisitor. The great master HAS NO MEANING! You are a fool to believe that your... our god can save you... for the time of man has ended. You are fools to believe that your Cataphracts, your crawlers can protect you from ITS WRATH! It's a pity that I did not know then what I know now..." *Unintelligable Laughter* " hahaha... It is too late... now." SOLOMON: *Looking skeptically at Abel* "For.. what?" *Grabs Abel* "What do you know now that could be so important then?" ABEL: "That we mean nothing to it. We stand on this earth as the pinnacle of god's creations, yet we are at the bottom. No one; no, that is not right. Not one of you understands... " *Laughing* "You fools, WE ARE NOT ALONE!!... WE ARE NOT ALONE, AND WE WERE NEVER ALONE!!" *Several footmen come in to restrain him* SOLOMON: "Take this heretic out of my sight." ABEL: *Being dragged into the distance* "WE ARE NOT ALONE! You hear me!? WE ARE NOT ALONE!..." Shortly afterwards, Brother-Crusader Simon Abel was executed for heresy. Recovered Soviet Footage >>CLASSIFIED<< For your eyes only The following footage was recovered from the ruins of a destroyed Soviet base in Siberia by a Soviet team. The person in the video has been identified as Dr. Alexei Borisanov, who was working in the base as a research scientist prior to its destruction. This incident happened shortly after a Soviet team recovered the wreckage of a strange machine and brought it to the base.' Video begins here Borisanov: "Comrades, can you hear me? I only hope that this video falls into the right hands. The base is under attack by strange robots. The base soldiers are doing everything they can to stop the attackers, but I fear that they cannot hold out much longer. There are just too many of them." The camera turns to show a group of Soviet Hammer Tanks and conscripts engaging and destroying strange humanoid robots, tanks, and larger robots. The Soviet forces are heavily outnumbered by the robots, but are holding them back, at least for now. Borisanov: "This may have something to do with the strange wreck that was brought here for study a few weeks ago." (Looks at the Soviet forces in the background) "We may just hold them off yet." Screams ring out as something approaches from off screen. The only indication of this thing is a massive shadow, looming over the battlefield. The robots swarm into the facility. The Soviets were unable to determine what in the world this might be. Borisanov turns his head to look at the thing, and screams. Borisanov: "NOOOO!!!!! NOOOO!!!!! (His eyes widen) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" (Inhuman Scream) Borisanov drops the camera at this point, and it clatters to the ground, pointing up into the night sky, which has suddenly turned grey and cloudy. At one point, the camera suddenly and inexplicably becomes distorted and filled with static, before returning to clear footage. No one was able to determine what might be the cause of this phenomenon. Video ends at this point --- It is not known what this horror is. Even the smartest scientists cannot say if we can know, only that it seems to come from their nightmares. All that is known is that it is only seen around Protectorate forces, though they are not immune to its otherworldly wrath. FutureTech Extranormal Investigation #48; Final Report '''Input: Chief Scientist Wells. Date: CLASSIFIED Facility: CLASSIFIED Forty days ago, I was instructed to perform a series of investigations concerning very disturbing rumours and dubious reports in the borders of Soviet influence areas. Commanders and Councillors were surprised for the sudden loss of interest of the Soviets in certain areas of CLASSIFIED, known to be specially rich in CLASSIFIED for the Soviets to throw them away so freely; so we (myself, FutureTech Extranormal Special Detachment, Security Commander Johanne Müller, and a small emergency contingent of the Allied CLASSIFIED base) were sent to investigate and assess the veracity of those rumours. Little to nothing was known of the events themselves, but according to reliable sources, unknown forces had struck several small outposts of the CLASSIFIED extremely fast and hard, leaving no survivors and little more than rubble in their way. Fast enough, they said, so no reports of the attacks were issued to their superiors. Not a single SOS. Such a frightening speed would only be possible if the assault force was composed of elite infiltrator units, supersoldiers or a coordinated inside action. In a Soviet base of that size, though, it could have been almost anything; a malfunction of a Super Reactor, poorly disguised by the Soviet ministries, could be the explanation for our deployment. We would have felt silly, but relieved, to find that the monsters that had attacked the base were just the typical low standards of Soviet safety. We ruled that much out, and some other things, almost at the first minute of investigation. The site of the biggest Soviet base in all of CLASSIFIED had been devastated. Commander Müller dared to compare it to the effects of a Psionic Decimator; in hindsight, I beg to differ. A Decimator wouldn't have pulled the basements out of the ground. A Decimator wouldn't have left relatively intact bodies after its use. A Decimator would have left very different tracks. And, finally, a single Decimator couldn't have destroyed the base. Not on its own. Not in a single shot. But the more our forces stood there, the more that uneasy feeling, the otherworldly impulse to fall to the ground while on your knees cowering in fear, was evident to all of us; the inmediate aftershock of a Decimator gives a similar feeling, and I had to agree with the Commander. While Müller started to build the standard low-rate advanced base, my men and I initiated our own investigation the site. The radiation scales were surprisingly normal. There was no indication that any Super Reactor or Desolator Defoliant accidents had occurred. Among the rests, several dozens of recording devices, some of them intact, were dug out and studied, in the hopes that some of them would contain information on the debacle that overcame such a large base; no useful data was recovered. Either it had been erased by Russian agents or the destruction of the base itself had made it impossible to recover. But, after a couple of days of making a full inventory of the remains, some soldiers from the Allied contingent called me; they had found dozens of metal pieces of completely unknown materials, twisted in a strange fashion, that had no ID numbers or symbols, nothing that would resemble Soviet products. It wasn't the first time I noticed them, but I had discarded them as freak remains of the four Battle Laboratories the base had. I was, evidently, wrong. After days of carefully driven exploration and recovery, our inventory had been spliced in two: Soviet remains and unknown remains. The uneasiness we had gotten used to came back, two-fold; the soldiers wouldn't dare to patrol around the base, and Apollo fighters flew in and out their own recon labour only in counted occasions. I can't say I appreciate the stiffness of military procedures, but at that time, I appreciated their superhuman efforts to surpass the unexplainable feeling that some of my own mates defined as "demise". This situation was stirred by an even more disturbing realisation; there were only conscripts and red pilots among the corpses. That they had been attacked, that much was clear. But if they had been attacked by a human power, there was no sign of it. Our first week passed in the midst of the desolate barren of the ruins. Müller's men were so alert that I feared a general psychotic breakdown in our lines; their discipline saved us again, but as they survived the invisible miasma that threatened everyone, the Detachment made the first (and last) real breakthrough in our investigation. A large derelict of what once was an Apocalypse Tank was in front of us. But it had been partially melted; or, rather, the armour seemed to have been twisted, like if it had become a gel for some instants and a giant hand had caressed it, deforming it. I was amazed; maybe the Russians had actually attempted to further weaponize Tesla devices. Then, the men of the Detachment, rather shaken, told me that I should look in the rear or the vehicle. I did so; and found two Soviet corpses literally fused to the armour. The sickening sight of those poor young recruits, contorted and terrified even in death, their forms preserved by cold nights, still terrifies me, but not because of the sight itself. The soldiers had scribbled six lines, four crossed by one and another one on the side, in the tank’s armour. They had survived, attached to the tank, for that long. When I pulled myself back together, I instructed my employees to extract the bodies. The armour itself made this task difficult, but a wielding torch and several hours of work sufficed. The autopsy revealed that, indeed, their bodies had coexisted with the tank armour ''in the same space; aside from the impossibility of such a thing happening, without the extensive possibilities of chronotechnology, one can only wonder how they managed to survive for six days, in the freezing environment of CLASSIFIED, but they did. And, while inventorying their belongings, I found a notebook, completely filled with a maddened writing.'' The soldier, who went by the name of CLASSIFIED managed to scribble either a rough but accurate description of the attack, or a complete schizoid episode. None of the previous are to be left unpondered, as what he wrote is too fantastic, terrible and unbelievable to be true. But one has to admit his limits. If something like this happened, I wouldn't believe it. Not even if it happened in front of my very own eyes. I would think I was either crazy or drugged. But there is an explanation to the madness that shook the base, and soldier CLASSIFIED's notebook had the answers. According to the notebook, the base was attacked by multiple waves of infantry. Small time infantry. He doesn't mention the fact that they are robots until the fourth or fifth wave reach their defensive lines. And, gentlemen, if you find this outrageous story unlikely, I will recommend you to read the 37th report of the Extranormal Investigation Detachment in which I explained the basis for the Japanese so-called Artificial Intelligences; it is possible to deploy autonomous, or even remote controlled robots in limited numbers. But here, we are talking of innumerable masses of robotic units. A tide of metal; and apparently, the Soviets fended them off every time, with casualties, but holding their position. But if that wasn't enough, the soldier talks repeatedly about "the Cloud." As it is not properly referred to any weather change, and is associated with especially delirious descriptions of death and destruction, I found it of little importance, at first. Then, the delirious descriptions became accurate and fitting, coming to explain most of the damage we had registered to the base. Several Hammer tanks had been found two miles away from the base, with no signs of their pilots; "the Cloud" would have lifted and launched them with its "tentacles". Fragments of MiGs had been spotted all around the base, and this was explained by CLASSIFIED as freak purple lighting that "the Cloud" used to blast them all. At least, four hundred dead men were recovered from the rubble, but we all knew at least three times more should have been stationed there, and according to the notebook, "the Cloud", literally "devoured" them; some of them shot themselves, some others fell prey to seizures and most were elevated into "the Cloud", to never be seen again. Probably the weight of the tank saved soldier CLASSIFIED and his comrade from such a destiny, whatever that would be. The soldier says, with his very last words, that he had seen "the Cloud", an "armoured Cloud", a "dreadnought in the skies". We don't know what he could mean, but, if my opinion is regarded, I would imagine this is some kind of technological abomination, a gunship geared with strange science that has to be destroyed. The robots that attacked the base were, to all intent and purposes, simple decoys. Cannon fodder. The real threat was this Cloud, that crazed an entire motor rifle division and razed structures and infrastructure that must have been worth millions of rubles in some minutes. No technology has been seized from this site of operations, and, if this scientist has any say in the matter, there will not be any, not from this source. Several men of the Allied contingent had to undergo psychiatric evaluation for shell-shock and schizoid breakdowns once our own field base was dismantled. I'm under heavy anti-depressive treatment as I write this report. No history of psychiatric illness in any of the cases, mine included, and a dozen stressful operations for all of us vouch for an strange and fearsome truth: that this "Cloud" weapon is, in truth, a psychic device used as a weapon, but not a gestalt without willpower, as a Decimator, or an anomaly like Yuriko Omega; this was something else entirely, and our prototype psychic mapping satelite should be used to assess the local situation as soon as possible. If psychic pollution is a reality, we have to warn the Japanese. And probably, everyone else. We advise cautionary measures to deepen the understanding of these "robots", and specifically, of the "Cloud" weapon. EVALUATION. DEEMED UNRELIABLE FOR MENTAL INSTABILITY OF THE AUTHOR. CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET UNDER THE ALLIED NATIONS DATA SECURITY ACT OF 1960. AUTHOR IN PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT. CURRENTLY SUSPENDED.' REPORT TERMINATED. ' Behind the Scenes The Icon is a long while from being in game, and is currently just a drawing. The Paradox team is less than enthusiastic with animating the many tendrils of this unit. Presumably, this unit is based on the Cthulu mythos, a large, hulking monstrosity that kills anything that looks at it and returns to a dreamless slumber. Category:Units